Foreign Affairs

Venezuelan Oil For Deportation Flights? Trump Reportedly Pushed To Make Deal With Maduro

Maduro screenshot/PBS NewsHour

President-elect Donald Trump is reportedly being urged to ease economic pressure on Venezuela in exchange for their government helping him achieve his mass deportation objectives.

U.S. oil executives and other businessmen close to Trump are pushing him to forgo his first-term policy of intense pressure on Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro in return for fewer illegal migrants in the U.S., according to a report in the Wall Street Journal. Such a deal is reportedly welcome within Maduro’s inner circle, with his government believing they can help Trump achieve his policy goals by supplying the U.S. with their oil in exchange for resuming deportation flights.

Under the Biden administration, federal immigration authorities and major cities across the country have experienced an unprecedented illegal immigration crisis. Management of this crisis was made more difficult when Venezuela, a major source of illegal immigration, stopped accepting deportation flights in February.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have fled the country under Maduro, a leftist authoritarian who has overseen rampant inflation, economic turmoil and political repression. Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan nationals have since flocked to the U.S., largely  by unlawfully crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, Customs and Border Protection data show.

Maduro’s refusal to accept deportation flights came in response to Washington, D.C.’s ongoing economic sanctions, which have targeted Venezuelan oil exports and other key sectors of the South American country’s economy.

Tensions between the two governments appear to only be escalating after Venezuela conducted what the international community largely regards a fraudulent presidential election earlier this year, with Maduro ultimately declaring himself the victor and is now set to serve another term in office. In response, the U.S. on Wednesday announced additional sanctions against 21 senior officials in Maduro’s inner circle.

“The United States is acting again today to hold Nicolás Maduro and his representatives accountable for undermining the electoral process in Venezuela and repressing the Venezuelan people,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a prepared statement. “Four months after the Venezuelan people elected Edmundo González Urrutia as president on July 28, Maduro and his representatives continue to falsely claim victory and violate democratic principles.”

The Wednesday declaration brings a total of 180 current or former Venezuelan officials sanctioned by the American government, according to Blinken. The State Department has also moved to impose visa restrictions on roughly 2,000 individuals for their purported role in undermining the Venezuelan electoral process or other acts of repression.

However, others have argued that U.S. sanctions have so far not worked to foment democracy in the South American country, and have only exacerbated economic issues and hastened migration outflow.

“The challenge is how do you disentangle yourself and the U.S. from a policy approach that utterly failed to generate political change in the country, impoverished more people and accelerated the migration of millions of Venezuelans,” stated Thomas Shannon, a former high-ranking U.S. diplomat in Latin America, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Trump, who defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in an electoral landslide earlier in November, campaigned on a hardline immigration platform. In addition to resuming border wall construction and reviving the Remain in Mexico program, the president-elect has continually vowed to conduct the largest deportation initiative in U.S. history.

Venezuela, reeling from economic ruin and political instability, has become one of the top sources of illegal migrants to the U.S. Experts have previously noted that, if Trump wants to fully execute a mass deportation initiative, some sort of deal that prompts Maduro to begin accepting deportations flights will have to be reached.